The Marine Museum at Fall River is a cultural gem and contains a wealth of Fall River Maritime History especially Steam Ship and Titanic memorabilia. Discover the art, books, models and many treasures the Marine Museum holds. This is a must see
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The Marine Museum at Fall River is a cultural gem and contains a wealth of Fall River Maritime History especially Steam Ship and Titanic memorabilia. Discover the art, books, models and many treasures the Marine Museum holds. This is a must see resource for landlubbers and mariners alike.

Carol Gafford is a public librarian, family historian, amateur archivist and book savior. She is currently the youth services/outreach librarian at the Swansea Public Library and volunteers for several museum and historical societies including the Marine Museum at Fall River, the Swansea Historical Society and the Bristol Historical and Preservation society. She is the editor of Past Times, the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists and is always looking for a new project to take on.

Americana--or roots-rock, alternative country, whatever you call it--is a nationwide musical genre, but The Moondoggies believe their brand is enhanced by a special Seattle kind of tone. New England fans will have the chance to judge for themselves when the quintet, on a national tour promoting their third album, "Adios I'm A Ghost," which was just released in August, swings by T.T. the Bear's in Cambridge on Wednesday (October 16).

The Moondoggies actually began as a bunch of classmates from Cascade High School in Everett, Washington, who followed their love of intense punky rock like Detroit legends the MC5 and The Stooges into their own punky garage band, The Familiars. But as the boys got older and began to enjoy jamming on some of the many other varieties of music they loved, they discovered they preferred acoustic jam sessions.

Having listened to everything from Pink Floyd to classic blues like Mississippi John Hurt, and of course Seattle's own Nirvana, the young musicians were especially blown away when they came across The Band's second album. By about 2005, they'd formed a new band, a quartet, taking a whimsical name from a silly movie ("Gidget"), and mixing in their own garage rock feel with that love of roots music. The result was sort of a bluesy folk-rock melange, but their 2008 debut "Don't Be A Stranger" got them lots of notice, as did their pure vocal harmonies and knack for infectious musical hooks. The sophomore album "Tidelands" in 2010 was less successful, and a bit darker, perhaps more softly rockin', yet not as engaging.

The Moondoggies had in fact kind of stepped back from the road a while back, with some members not eager to continue the endless touring. But coincidentally, they got a chance to play a promotional event for Jansport at the Bear Creek Studio, and something rather organic happened. The Moondoggies loved the studio, and studio head Ryan Hadlock loved their music.

Long story short, the Moondoggies embarked on re-establishing themselves, firming up the lineup by adding longtime pal and multi-instrumentalist Jon Pontrello, writing a passel of new tunes, and ultimately recording 21 tracks at Bear Creek. The new CD, produced by Hadlock, includes 12 of those cuts, and has already been hailed as their best and most well developed record yet.

The Moondoogies also include Bobby Terreberry on bass, Carl Dahlen on drums, Caleb Quick on keyboards, and Kevin Murphy on guitar and lead vocals. Murphy and Quick write most of the band's songs, and they've also been known to do some terrific covers, like songs from Crazy Horse, or Doug Sahm. To describe their sound for New England fans, we'd venture that The Moondoggies sound is about halfway between The Swinging Steaks and The Del Fuegos, with a definite taste of Flying Burritos and Los Angeles singer-songwriter fare mixed in. Early in their career they were compared to Fleet Foxes, but Moondoggies are much more likely to veer into swampy boogie and more visceral rock, even while keeping those vocal harmonies intact.

"The Familiars band kind of ended because we just got tired of it," said Murphy with a chuckle, as the band was arriving in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to open the tour earlier this week. "That loud, punk-rock stuff is great for a more high school age, where it's all attitude. We still love it, but mainly we didn't want to be limited to it. In our more communal settings, we found it was just easier to work up songs with acoustic instruments, and we just began moving in that direction."

"We all grew up listening to all kinds of different music, from (Pink) Floyd to Neil Young, Blonde Redhead, Crazy Horse," noted Murphy. "The comparisons we get most often are either Neil or The Band, but I know I was also always a big fan of psychedelic rock, and we all went to see the same shows, so that's a big part of this band. "

"We can go in a lot of different directions," Murphy concluded, "and we don't like having any kind of restrictions on what type of music we end up doing. We all grew up together, so we have no problem bringing out whatever we want to be playing, and having the other guys know what we're going for, and joining right in."

That's a fresh approach that appealed to their record label, Hardly Art, a subsidiary of the legendary SubPop label. There were some personal things happening in some members' lives that colored the second album, like the death of Terreberry's dad (which also caused him to step away from the road), and some of the lineup shifts were temporarily jarring. But the label stuck with them, and the Moondoggies feel rejuvenated by this new music.

"We played T.T. the Bear's about two years ago on our last tour of the East," Murphy pointed out. "But so much has happened since then--we kind of regrouped, and started over. We never want to make the same record over and over. One goal with this one was to have more variety of sounds, reflecting our many interests. That's as opposed to our first album, which was kind of twangy, and our second, which was slower. We wanted this record to be an amalgamation of those two, but also some of our other musical influences, and I think we had been drifting towards this new batch of songs for a few years."

Some of the tunes on the new album are in fact fairly new, while there are some others which the band has had, and performed in one form or another, almost since their beginning. The Moondoggies have a well-packed songbook of their own material, but there is also a continual evolution, where songs are reshaped and re-done, road-tested and revised.

The new CD has some delectable arrangements, such as the introspective "Pride," whose theme of whether the singer can allow himself to love someone is framed in dazzling finger-picked guitar lines, and gorgeous three-part vocal harmonies. The song "Midnight Owl,"on the other hand, has an easy folk-rockin' flow, and a yearning vocal surrounded by irresistible melodic hooks. "Stop Signs" also boasts those fabulous melodic hooks and pinpoint harmonies, but also Murphy's maturing lyric writing, another deceptively poignant self-examination. "Back to the Beginning" has a marvelously complex and well designed arrangement.

"Pride" is a good example of how our more acoustic tunes are always being reworked," said Murphy. "That's one we've had for a while, but we kept working it out. We figured out that particular arrangement in the studio, but I'd bet we still play it differently every time we do it live. "Back to the Beginning" was one we had figured out in our practice space. When Caleb and I write, we generally let the other guys have a hand in the arrangement, but other times we'll have one where we really want to get something out a certain way, and be more specific."

"Some of the songs on this album were ones we had been doing live for quite some time," Murphy added. "Some of them had really been done a bunch of different ways, and changed a lot since we first wrote them. We recorded most of this album live in the studio--we feel most confident playing as a band, going at it together. It feels kind of weird to step back from the album and see what it is. You're trying to gauge someone else's concept of those songs, and if they sound any good when done altogether like that."

Pontrello is often cited as Murphy's oldest friend and most frequent musical partner, as the duo have been playing together since they were 14. He was always on the fringe of the Moondoggies, an almost constant presence and frequent onstage guest, but not committed to being a fulltime member. Having Pontrello on board not only makes the stage show better, it eases the songwriting process for Quick and Murphy.

"Having Jon in the band all the time definitely makes the songwriting easier," said Murphy. "Hopefully that means it's not going to be another three years before we do another record."

In fact, the songwriting process is so streamlined now that local fans may well be hearing quite a few new and unrecorded Moondoggies tunes, along with a bunch of songs from "Adios I'm A Ghost."

"On this tour we're recording every show," said Murphy, and the band's website includes a link for free downloads of many of their concert dates.

"It's theoretically a good idea," he said with a soft laugh, "which helps us sprinkle in some new tunes and see how they work. It's also a way to lend some freshness to the shows for ourselves. The new album was actually recorded about a year ago, and we'd been playing most of those songs for quite a while, so those songs are pretty 'old' to us. And, doing a lot of new music on tour now should help us get a good jump on our next record."

As noted, Americana is a broad category and one that has adherents all over the country. The Northeast and Boston/Cambridge/Somerville in particular has a thriving roots music community. But how would a Moondoggie describe the Seattle variation?

"I think our style has a little bit more darker aspect," Murphy replied. "I think that comes naturally, just because of the atmosphere in the Northwest, partly from the weather too. There is a brighter side to our music, don't get me wrong. But we feel very much like a Northwest band, with that sort of unmistakeable tone."

The Moondoggies are touring with SubPop rockers Rose Windows, whose sound delves even more into psychedelia than their own, and whose own debut album just dropped this fall. This tour will takes them through the middle of December and goes coast-to-coast.

At the T.T.'s show, Rose Windows goes on around 10 p.m., with Moondoggies headlining around 11 p.m. Boston's Billy Dodge opens the T.T.'s show with a 9 p.m. set for this 18-plus show. T.T. the Bear's is located at 10 Brookline St., in Central Square, Cambridge. Tickets are available through TicketWeb or at the door, for $10, and more information can be found at www.ttthebears.com, or by calling 617-492-BEAR (2327).

"We're pretty excited to be able to return to New England," said Murphy. "And I'd urge people to check out Rose Windows; they're a pretty rockin' band, and there will be good dancing all night long."